1. The Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to systems and methods for organizing and retrieving geographic information, geographically related or linked information, and geographically associated programs. More particularly, the present invention relates to systems and methods for making geographic information available for display to a user by compiling reference information specifying retrieval addresses and display formats of geographic information, applications, and associated tabular data located at multiple data sources that are accessible via the Internet or other wide area or local area networks.
2. Prior State of the Art
Managing, organizing, and displaying geographic information using computers has become increasingly common. Such use of geographic information has proved to be valuable in many industries and organizations, such as governmental agencies, public utilities, and the like. Computer display of geographic information allows vast amounts of information to be efficiently communicated to users and also allows the geographic information to be easily edited.
With the recent explosive growth of the Internet, numerous geographic information resources at remote sites around the world have become instantly available to users, regardless of their location. Along with the increasing availability of geographic information, there has been a corresponding increase in the difficulty and complexity of referencing, organizing, and managing geographic resources. In order to retrieve geographic information using the Internet, the user or the retrieving computer must know the uniform resource locator (URL) or another address associated with the information. In addition, because there is no universally accepted display format for geographic data types, they may be configured according to any of a large number of display formats. Accordingly, in order to retrieve and display geographic information, a geographic information system (GIS) must have reference information relating to the geographic information and specifying at least the address and display format thereof.
Some basic GIS applications require the user to remember the location of relevant geographic information and to manually type in the information from (human) memory or hard copy in order to retrieve and display the information. There are also custom GIS applications which do not require user interaction to determine the location of information, but they are limited to a predefined set of data sources. Such approaches are inconvenient from the standpoint of the user or are restricted in the amount and variety of information that may be accessed. Several major geographic information system vendors have recently marketed open GIS applications, which include open platforms and which are compatible with a large number of display formats. While such open standards increase the amount of geographic information that is accessible to a user using a single application, they do nothing to facilitate the organization and interrelation of various geographic information sources and geographic data structures.
Many of the problems that are impeding the full potential and applicability of geographic information systems have not been adequately addressed by conventional approaches. There still exists the difficulty of sharing and making freely available geographic information to all interested users within an organization. Moreover, there is no geographic information system that can adequately coordinate the use and execution of multiple applications that may be needed to display geographic information originating from different data sources.
In view of the foregoing, there is a need in the art for systems and methods of organizing geographic information located at remote sources in such a way that it is easily accessible and displayable to users. It would be a further advantage if such methods could conveniently facilitate the exchange and distribution of geographic information to multiple users within an organization.